I, IN THE MEMBERSHIP OF MY DAYS

Remember Camelot, This Sporting Life, MacArthur Park? Unfortunately, Richard Harris, actor, singer, Irish to the hilt, in this collected verse from childhood on up, has the notion (shared, less excusably, by some professional poets) that the essence of poetry is misery: hence an endless stream of self-righteous, self-pitying sentimentalities on the passing of time, absence of love, loss of purity, death of friends, betrayals of Christ. Most of it is junk, some pretentiously rhetorical (""Wing tipped sailing soul/just/beginning/ connective tissue"" and ""I/ am the wind/ raging against the sea/ singing songs/ to the empty vessels""), others just plain junk: ""Too soon/too soo/ too so/ too s/ too/ to/ t."" There are occasional decent ones; however these were all written circa 1940, long before the poet was taught to mess up his clear childhood vision. Ail in all, it's heartening in these star-struck times, to see our more-than-lifesize screen heroes cut down to human size, where their hopes and fears are just as banal as anybody else's.